Chapter 5 #2
‘Hey, boss. How was your date?’
‘Dull as fuck. Did Richie bring back the van keys?’
‘Yep!’
‘Nice, gonna save me a trip tomo— Jesus, boy, I’d aim better after ten brandies.’
Loris completely missed his throw, so the keys landed in the middle of the room. Charles slips from his stool with a chuckle and picks them up as the woman steps closer, revealing her grumpy face.
Charles gives her the keys, her sunken eyes bore into him, and his brain splits in half.
The pub looks the same, but the bob of hair around the woman’s grumpy face is grey.
Half as tall, Charles is hopping and crying in fake pain.
He begs her to call someone, hiccupping that his ankle hurts, but every time she asks for a name, he cries louder.
Next to him, George is transfixed, unable to answer her questions.
He’s not acting, he’s truly petrified, because she’s terrifying.
They’ve heard rumours of children being cooked in the basement of this pub, so why did they let Liv and Fred talk them into this?
No video game is worth the risk of ending up in a stew pot.
The woman is losing patience when George’s sister storms in.
‘There you are, boys! I’m sorry for the trouble, Madam.
I’ve got them now!’ Charles is so relieved he forgets about his fake injury, but George elbows him, so he hobbles to the door.
Liv supports him until they turn at the corner, then she instructs them to run, and Charles’ heart starts racing.
He won’t be chopped into a stew. And he did it. He actually did it.
Liv drags them to the left, to the right, and finally into a cul-de-sac. Fred is waiting there, sitting on the cases of Peroni bottles they stole from the pub van – to smuggle in at Liv’s sixteenth birthday party.
Charles speeds up, and Fred jumps to his feet, arms open. Cracking up, he catches Charles, who feels so proud he could burst. Proud, invincible and ready for any mission Fred may give him.
‘You were fantastic, Charlie!’
‘Charles?’
‘Thank you!’
‘Charles!’
A gentle press on his arm whisks him back into the North Haven, where the woman is gone and Loris is right in front of him.
‘What’s wrong?’
Charles recoils, beads of sweat trickling down his spine. His heart races faster, but he’s no longer invincible. He’s completely exposed to Loris’ concerned eyes and so vulnerable his stomach flips.
‘Nothing, I’m— It’s fine. I do that. It’s a writer thing... Storylines and characters, they just— They take over…’
Panic is choking coherence out of him. What was that? How did he space out so bad?
He teeters back to the stool and fishes his pen out of his pocket. He clicks it, over and over, to steady his breathing while searching for patterns in the fizz edging to the top of his pint glass.
‘Here…’
Charles stares at the hand pushing a glass of water towards him, then at the arm, and at the worried face that he desperately needs to be disconcerting and mocking. That’s what his bubble was made of. It’s not all blurry yet, he could shape it again.
Nipping at the water, he blinks away lasting images of the adventure he just recollected.
He’s still clicking his pen, but when Loris’ eyes fall on his thumb, he drops it.
‘It’s okay, Charles. I watched you mistreat it for an hour the other day. I would have kept it, Olwinski or not.’
Charles exhales a strained laugh. He has no memories of taking his concern out on the pen when he was waiting to hear about Elsy’s medical issue. But Loris noticed and remembers. His awareness is dangerous. Charles needs to conjure the smartarse back.
‘You shouldn’t tell people you watched them for an hour.’
His voice isn’t as assured as he would like, but his answer redraws a smile on Loris’ face.
‘I usually don’t tell them, but you’re a stalker. That shouldn’t freak you out.’
‘Fair.’
‘I got the socks, by the way.’
‘Sorry?’
‘From the gift shop. At the Hermitage Museum. I bought the six pairs of socks.’
Charles gapes for a few pen clicks. ‘You went to the double Lands showing in St Petersburg?’
‘My mum took me, yeah. Huge Olwinski fan too.’
‘No way! You were there? Did you sit in one of those red armchairs we could spin from one painting to the other?’
‘You bet! I didn’t go to pee once, to keep my spot.’
‘Same.’ Charles smiles, the bubble thickening around them. ‘Which Land is your favourite?’
‘That day? Kraków. Overall, Ljubljana, but I’ve never been to San Francisco to see it.’
‘Alright… This is a bit surreal, having this conversation with you. Not you, Loris, but...’
‘With anyone? Yeah. As you said, he’s criminally underrated. That, we agree on.’ Loris moves closer, resting his forearms on the counter in front of Charles. ‘Sadly, there’s something we’re not on the same page about.’
‘Pun intended?’
‘Everything I do is intended. We need to discuss the book. You seemed ready to deck me in the mud because of it.’
‘Massive overstatement. I was just about to—’
‘It’s bloody freezing!’
Charles jumps and hits his pint glass, but Loris is close enough to catch it.
‘You’re early,’ he says with a warm smile, looking over Charles’ shoulder.
‘It’s okay, right? You’ve closed the place now? Or… almost?’
Charles swivels on his stool. A purple-haired young woman and a husky guy are staring at him from the middle of the room.
‘Yeah, almost.’
‘What about the Wicked Witch of the North?’ the guy asks in a strong Hispanic accent.
‘Gone.’
‘Fab!’
He takes a pack of beer out of his backpack and sets it down on the closest table. Charles looks back at Loris, who’s walked around the bar but stops next to him.
‘Are you allowed to do that?’
‘Hang out here? Sure. Patty doesn’t care as long as we don’t drink her stock. But they prefer when she’s not in the building. Some dumb urban legend about oven-roasted kids in the basement.’
‘There’s nothing dumb about this legend,’ Charles says confidently, even though he had no memory of it ten minutes ago.
‘Don’t encourage them! I’m sorry, our Pavel conversation is gonna have to wait. But feel free to stay.’
‘I should go. Early meeting tomorrow.’
Charles was ready to chat about Olwinski until dawn, so this is a half-baked excuse that puts a drastic dampener on his mood.
As long as he had an inaccurate Loris-conclusion to be cross about, it was easy to keep the firm’s board meeting in a remote corner of Charland.
The board meeting and the detailed feedback his father will demand at dinner time.
They’ve just sprung back to the forefront, holding megaphones.
‘Where do you work?’
Charles waves the question off and collects his pen. ‘How much do I owe you?’
‘Depends. Are you free on Tuesday? It’s my day off. I’ve got to work on a personal project, but I’m a great multitasker. And we wouldn’t be constantly interrupted at my place. If you bring beers, I’ll cover this one for you.’
‘Where’s your place?’
‘Across the street, above the acupuncture clinic. The green door on the right.’
Charles squints, trying to picture a frontage he’s probably seen a hundred times without seeing it. ‘I’m not sure I can…’
Tuesday rings a bell that sounds like Elsy. And the proposition is very high on Charles’ scale of unexpected. He can foresee a great deal of second-guessing whipsawing his brain over it.
‘If not, I’m here any other night. Let me know.’
Loris pushes himself above the counter to grab a pad and a handful of pens. The first two don’t work, but he manages to scribble his phone number with the third one.
‘Loris, with one L.’
Charles folds the leaf, edges aligned, and slides it into his pocket.
They cross the room together, passing by Loris’ friends who have remained silent and staring. Charles wishes them a good evening and gets a nod and a thousand-watt smile.
‘You too, man.’
‘Mind the witch!’
‘We’re safe on weekends. She only hunts on—’
‘Oh shut up, people!’
Charles chortles at Loris’ annoyance and opens the door. ‘?a suffit, nom d’un chien!’
‘What?’
‘My French tutor would say that. So I always gave him the name of a dog in response.’
‘Really? That makes you a smartarse too.’
Loris smiles broadly, revealing a thin gap between his front teeth.
The kind of childish proud smile Charles would hardly bite down at the dining table, while Milton rebuked him for his brazenness in French classes, and Fred cackled from his seat.
Fred loved it when Charles acted up. Fred constantly nudged him to misbehave and involved him in illegal secret missions.
Fred did all that.
He did.
Did he?
‘Get home safe.’
‘Yes… Goodnight.’
When Loris closes the door, the wind smacks Charles’ face, shatters the French-accented bubble, but scatters more clouds away from his memory.
It’s just after 10pm, and Elsy hasn’t sent any change-of-plan alert, so Charles makes a left, his heart pounding. Whether he ends up feeling invincible or crushed to pieces, he needs to find the cul-de-sac where Fred waited after stealing the beers.
Charles needs to meet with this mischievous version of his late brother that he had blurred into oblivion.